She hadn't meant to find out about Damian and Claire either — it seemed to be becoming a pattern, Elena thought wryly, this business of stumbling into other people's secrets in a house designed to keep everything hidden behind polished doors.
She'd gone to the east wing garden to escape a particularly tense lunch with Marcus, needing air and distance from a table where every question felt like a performance review, and found Damian and a woman she recognized instantly from the gala sitting on the stone bench beneath the wisteria, their heads bent close together in a way that had nothing to do with casual friendship. The afternoon light filtered gold through the trellis above them, and for a moment Elena simply stood at the edge of the hedge, struck by how different Damian looked here than
